Certainly rare in the northern parts of the United States, this estate includes a chapel and a mausoleum. The house has served a single family without breaks in ownership since the 1770s. David Shields built the smaller two-story brick block in 1816 on land granted decades before to his father-in-law, surveyor Daniel Leet. The main house, two-and-one-half stories in height, followed seven years later in a more refined Greek Revival style. The gardens are the glory of the eleven-acre estate and they include an early-twentieth-century labyrinth, attributed to Bryant Fleming.
The Way family also prospered in Sewickley and Edgeworth for nearly two centuries,